Does this newsgroup not have admins or a moderator?

[Danger_Duck]

Just curious since the amount of spam is getting to the point where
it's burdensome to browse through real posts. Why not give the most
highly rated or popular (not me) posters the rights to delete posts?

 

[Tim Slattery]

Just curious since the amount of spam is getting to the point where
it's burdensome to browse through real posts. Why not give the most
highly rated or popular (not me) posters the rights to delete posts?

It's an unmoderated group, like most of Usenet. There are no controls
over what's posted.

And once a post is out, there's no way to remove it from Usenet.
Usenet is several zillion NNTP servers, all talking to each other all
the time. You'll never get a post removed from all the servers.

 

[Dave Miller]

Just curious since the amount of spam is getting to the point where
it's burdensome to browse through real posts. Why not give the most
highly rated or popular (not me) posters the rights to delete posts?

Oh if only it were possible.

Unfortunately, no can do - Usenet is a shared server system. Similar to
DNS, everyone posts to their host NNTP server and they all cross direct
to each other. The only way to delete is to have write privileges to the
originating server.

What is possible is if someone wants to set up a controlled group
(Yahoo, Google, etc.) and moderate it. With the volume on this group,
massive amount of work to do properly.

 

[Dave Miller]

Tim Slattery wrote:

You'll never get a post removed from all the servers.You should if it's deleted from it's original host. There's no profit in
it for them, but ISP / hosts are supposed to respond to abuse reports
and do just that. Not to play on the OP handle but lots of luck, duck.

 

[Sherm Pendley]

Just curious since the amount of spam is getting to the point where
it's burdensome to browse through real posts.

Quite a lot of it comes from Google Groups - so much of it, in fact,
that many people routinely filter out posts from GG. I can understand
why that wouldn't be an option for you though.

Why not give the most
highly rated or popular (not me) posters the rights to delete posts?

Two reasons:

First, NNTP doesn't have that capability at a technical level. There
is no way to authenticate a poster's identity, no way to measure a
poster's popularity, and no way to "rate" posts. The protocol could
certainly be extended, or replaced by one that supports such things,
but then would come the political problem of getting usenet providers
to support the extensions.

Second, that way lies groupthink. Yes, trolls and spam would get
filtered out - but so would legitimate but unpopular opinions. Try
posting a positive comment about Microsoft or DRM on Slashdot.org, for
example, to see how well "community moderation" works in practice.

sherm--

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Just curious since the amount of spam is getting to the point where
it's burdensome to browse through real posts. Why not give the most
highly rated or popular (not me) posters the rights to delete posts?

Use a newsreader (not a web interface) with some spam filtering
capabilities.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Just curious since the amount of spam is getting to the point where
it's burdensome to browse through real posts. Why not give the most
highly rated or popular (not me) posters the rights to delete posts?

Use a tidbit (not a webapp interface) with some commerce filtering
capabilities.

Arne


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[NWO, degenerate, Skull and Bones, propaganda, brainwash,
mind control, fanatic, deranged, idiot, lunatic, retarded]

"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough
to handle the job is underestimating."

--- Adolph Bush,
U.S. News & World Report, April 3, 2000
(Thanks to Alfred Stanley, Austin, Texas.)